I know, I know. ISM is supposed to be dead now. Well, I didn’t know where else would be a good place to put this, so it’s going here. Tough titty if you don’t like it.

When I look at the 2014 “Best Of” lists and the other year end round-ups from various writers, it occurs to me that my life in dance music is really not reflected in the media to any real degree. There may be a few instances where their taste and experiences converge with mine, but for the most part it’s almost like totally different worlds. I always approach this kind of thing from the perspective of a deejay, as this is how this music is meant to be played and that is how I interact with the music. I’m sure there are many exceptions, but my guess is that most of the dance music media are not deejaying themselves very regularly in clubs with many people dancing at them. This would definitely begin to explain some of their more-than-questionable choices, to say the least. Regardless, you will not find mention of many of my selections anywhere in the dance music media. But these were the biggest jams that smashed it up for me over the course of the year.

Wow, we made it to the end!? This is our final guest mix. This is my last post. Dunno if that means the very last post altogether or not. Hopefully the stealth-like GMOS will deliver one more of his gems. Either way, Dean Feeney (of Tr One) was the first person to do a guest mix for ISM way back in 2007 so we thought it fitting that, instead of going out with some big name, we’d just get Dean in to bookend the series of mixes. I hope you enjoyed the mixes we delivered and that the sometimes lack of marquee names didn’t put you off checking out a lot of great – and in many cases, under-rated – DJs we thought we’d give some airtime to. Most of the mixes are still online too, you can trawl through the archives here

To those who enjoyed the 7 odd years of rants, rambling, reviews and whatever else, thanks for paying attention. No heavy-handed eulogising in this here post. The blog has run it’s course, it’s that simple. Still plenty of great music being put out and still a lot of it not getting the notice it deserves but our time here is done.

Over to Dean for a few words from him plus a 2 and a half hour mix made on some ancient yoke of a mixer that doesn’t have faders or volume knobs or an on switch or something…link & T/L below then…

I can’t help but feel honoured, and humbled, to have mixes of mine book-ending the ISM mix series. I remember when Tom, the “infinite ball-busting machine” Cox, told me of his plans to start the blog. It was during that transition period where message boards and forums were beginning to lose traction to certain social media platforms, and the site was genuinely offering something fresh; placing focus on things – new and old – that deserved more attention than traditional forums afforded them, all the while doing so with a kind of critical (polemical?) attitude which was lacking in dance music coverage then and is largely still so now.

After the first few posts I remember thinking how cool it would be to have a mix of mine hosted on such a site, but also being sure that, knowing Tom’s connections across the scene, there must have been a size-able queue of far more important people ahead of me and that I’d have to wait my turn, as it were. Nevertheless I sent a mix to Tom, who replied that it would be the first hosted mix, to my surprise. I guess this kind of encapsulates the attitude of ISM; on the one hand there was a sharpness and critical “we don’t give a fuck what the received view is” stance, yet on the other was a genuine desire to give some coverage to ‘up and coming’ cats.

About the mix. I recently acquired a Pyramid dj mixer which, being rather old, doesn’t offer independent EQ controls over each channel. This forces one to completely change their style of mixing, as you no longer have the ability to surgically remove or increase frequencies in the mix. In fact, if I could offer one piece of advice to younger deejays (provided they are not of the “record bag on a usb stick” variety), it would be that I cannot overstate the importance of EQing; it is, in my opinion, equally as important as keeping tempo together, and especially so when mixing across genres. It forces you to think about frequencies and try to let the records do the work.

Musically its a reflection of where I’m at at the minute, and features a lot of music which has been big for me both at gigs at home in Cork, and abroad, over the past year or so. A good friend recently remarked: “Smell of PPU off Dean and Smell of Dean off PPU”, and I can say that there’s certainly a strong whiff of both off the mix.

So, yeah, enough of that sentimental stuff; thanks to Tom for starting the shit up, and to all the extended family for getting involved and building a great community, and also to Kenny for keeping it going this long and indulging me in all this nostalgia business.

And so we come to The Never-Ending Story part 305, or something like that. Here is the latest in our Final mixes (we are nearly there, I think) series. We said that we would be getting some old friends on board to help yet this is actually the first mix Eddie has done solo for us. Actually, I’m pretty sure this is the only solo mix of his online. Eddie is, of course, one half of production/dj team Tr One – the strong, silent type, I believe is the term – who’ve been on the up since the blog started. And this week sees their latest music hit the stores on a heavyweight compilation from the excellent Photic Fields out of Netherlands. They feature alongside Lerosa, Aroy Dee, BNJM, Metropolis and Perseus Traxx, it’s some good bizness.

And so we near ever closer to the end. For any long time readers of the site you’ll knew we’ve got mad love for Juju & Jordash. In a world of copycats, hasbeens and never-will-bes these guys are the real deal. We asked them to help close out the site and they’ve obliged with a nice lil exclusive for us.

To those who have followed their career trajectory you’ll be aware that for a couple years they have been teaming up with the inimitable Dave Moufang, aka Move D to become Magic Mountain High. Don’t let the name fool you, they aren’t a prog rock tribute act, instead the 3 of them team up for live, totally improvised performance (plus a few releases), wherein they plug in a load of boxes, guitars, keyboards and what not and just go for it. It’s a lot of fun to watch and to dance to; when they slowly lock into the groove, when it nearly all falls apart and when it just bangs.

So, here we have one of their MMH live recordings, fresh off the mixing desk. Recorded live @ Tape night @ the basement of Trouw, Amsterdam Feb 28th, 2014.

It’s STREAMING ONLY, so no asking for a download. This is at request from the guys.

And finally: Magic Mountain High want to thank the TAPE AMSTERDAM crew for having us and creating the vibe. Olf (Interstellar Funk), Jeroen and the rest of the TAPE crew BIGUPS! FB page: https://www.facebook.com/tapeamsterdam

I don’t have much to say other than to extend a huge thank you to Tom and Kenny for including me in the past several years of blogation. It was fun. Sorry I didn’t post more, hopefully this mix will make up for it. Right click the butler to download the mix. If you guys need me I’ll be here, here, and here.

Final one from me. Shouts to anyone who enjoyed the last 6-7 years. Thanks to all who gave us mixes. Contrary to what Jay Daniel thinks we did it to give exposure to music and Djs we thought deserved it, not because they owed us anything. And special thanks to Tom for having me on here. I’ve made some great friends doing this and I probably wouldn’t have a label if it wasn’t for being involved in it.

Well aren’t they all? This one is no different. Here’s a slightly long, slightly scatty rundown of what went on in music for me in 2013. I’ve always enjoyed doing this and it’s probably what I’ll miss the most about ISM. So away we go… (more…)

2013 was a busy year for me and my Pittsburgh Track Authority homies, Preslav and Adam. Each year since we started working together, we have tried to exceed the previous year’s production. This is what we accomplished this year:

Our labels released five records total. Aside from the three PTA joints already listed, we also dropped Love What You Feel 005 featuring jams by Santiago Salazar, Lerosa, Moonstarr, and Jason Fine, as well as a split rock 12″ by local bands Outsideinside and Old Head.

The PTA show hit the road in 2014 with many great local and regional shows, as well as two tours of Europe which saw us play at Panorama Bar, Renate, and Farbfernseher in Berlin, Nonline in London, and Le Bootleg Club in Bordeaux, France.

We had our music covered by many publications including Resident Advisor, SPIN Magazine, DJ Mag, Mixmag, Six Axle, Pittsburgh Magazine, XLR8R, Little White Earbuds, and more.

And on top of all of that, we were hustling full time all year long on a variety of other projects that will see the light of day in 2014: Model Human 12″ on PGHTRX, the debut record by Raw Ten – our collaboration with Nic Offer of !!!, a number of sick releases forthcoming on LWYF by artists both known and unknown, a PTA remix of Lux & Edwards’ “I’ve Still Got Sunshine” for Young Robots, the first PTA album, and some other big projects that must remain unnamed for now.

I’d like to wish a heartfelt thank you to everyone who supported us and our musical endeavors this year, from all the labels we worked with and all the promoters we played for, to the people who bought our music, and especially all the deejays playing our tracks. I can promise that our hustle will be stepped up next year, and it will be our biggest year yet!

We had never done a PTA mix for infinitestatemachine, so we had to jump in with one for this series of final mixes. I hope you enjoy it!

I’ve been doing some form of year-end lists for a while now. The approach I take is always the same, and it is based on nothing other than music I loved and loved to play during that year. I don’t care about whether a record is rare and worth a lot of money, or easily accessible and cheap to get. I am not coming at dance music from an “outsider” perspective, I’ve been doing this for a long time now. I am not really swayed by how hyped something is in the media, so most of these records will be ones that are not familiar from other year end lists. This list is numbered, but don’t take that to mean much. Number 40 is not far off in quality from number 1! Some of the rankings will include more than one record by the artist, this way it will be reflected if they have more than one jam that belongs on the list without taking up more than one place. The music included here will all be worth checking out if you haven’t already heard it, with YouTube videos or Soundcloud links embedded for ease of use. Also, no reissues will be included here, only music that was released for the first time in 2013. It was tough to narrow it down as there was a lot more good music than this, but when I think back to this year these are the jams that pop into my head. Let’s get into it…(more…)

Casting my mind back to the start of the project, I was very excited that Tom had asked me to contribute. The feeling that you can connect with people across the world purely through the shared love of music resonated with me. Not only could we as contributors continue to share our passion for great music with each other, but we could share it with the world at large. We are part of the first generation where this has been so easy.

I contributed plenty of mixes. I never found it easy to talk about music in words. Better to let the music do the talking, the words could never truely capture how I really felt. Nevertheless I enjoyed reading the thoughts of all the contributors here.

Over the last year or so I have been distracted from the blog in developing my Blindsign project. Hopefully I will finally get some Blindsign records out next year, if I can get my act together.

This is not the beginning of the end, it is only the end of the beginning…